“What, then? he must be beginning to hate me. I cannot let Christmas pass and this go on. Think of him alone amongst the frost and the snow, nothing but his sick people, no one to cheer him, called out perhaps in the middle of the night, riding miles and miles to comfort some poor creature, and no one, no one to comfort him!”
“My dear child!” Miss Farrell cried, taking Winifred into her kind arms.
At this moment there was a tinkle at the queer little bell outside—or rather it had tinkled at the moment when Winifred spoke of the frost and snow. When Miss Farrell rose and hastened to her, to raise her downcast head and dry her tears, the old lady gave a start and cry, displacing suddenly that head which she had drawn to her own breast. Winifred, too, looked up in the sudden shock; and there, opposite to her in the doorway, a cold freshness as of the larger atmosphere outside coming in with him, stood Edward Langton, pale and eager, asking, “May I come in?” with a voice that was unsteady, between deadly anxiety and certain happiness.
They said a great deal to each other, enough to fill volumes; but so far as the present history is concerned, there need be no more to say.